Breaking the Pride Inside

For those who ever doubted how faithful God is, here is proof of His faith.

For the past few weeks, I have been praying to the Lord to help me in breaking down my Pride and to teach me the meaning of Humility. Pride is the source of many other afflictions such as selfishness, greed, lust, and anger.

For many years, I had a high-minded and proud attitude about myself. I was never in the wrong, others around me were lazy, mean-spirited, and always trying to get by with doing as little as possible. I sought out my own vindications, revenge, and worked hard to always be right and to be shown as the shining star on top of the heap. This attitude only lead me into bitterness, the desire to isolate from the World, and to turn away from all that was Godly.

Since beginning my walk with God 3 years ago (with some breaks in-between for the old attitudes rearing their ugly heads) I have been blessed and healed by Him in so many ways. My stony heart has been replaced with a more tender one. My eyes have been opened to notice Others who are struggling in their lives, and compassion has begun to grow inside me for the first time since I was a child. I found myself treating people far more gently and with special care then I ever had. The more I talk to God and read his Word, the more I wanted to and this only increased my healing.

It was the beginning of 2013 that the Holy Spirit put on my heart that it was time to put down some of the old habits that were stunting my spiritual growth. When I found these habits (addictions) could not easily be put to rest, I began to seek God’s help and guidance with a vengeance. I began reading about humility, pride, and learning how the first is what we are to strive for in our spiritual walk. The earthly pride had to be broken in order to move forward in God’s plan for my life.

March 27, 2013:  I receive my written Performance Review from my Manager. It is a major blow to my pride to read that my endeavours over the past year are seen as below the minimum requirements expected of me in my position! I had felt that I was working at a pace far greater than I ever had, while thanking God each day and night for His Grace and strength that were allowing me to keep up to the demands that had been placed on me this year. Immediately, I felt sick to my stomach and my head swam with prideful thoughts about how wrong my Manager was.

Over the morning, I allowed the Word of God to speak to me and I tried my best to listen with my heart.

“Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, so that in due season He may exult you”.

“Do not be conformed to this World, but be transformed by the entire renewal of your mind”.

“Set your mind and keep it set on things above, and not on things of this Earth”.

While those thoughts did help to calm me down, and read over my Performance Review a 2nd time with a more open-mind, I still felt very sick to my stomach and thought of going home and taking the rest of the week off.

It was then placed on my heart that I should take a few moments and blog about this experience. As I have been writing, I have felt joy and contentment returning to my soul. Now my plan is to take a walk on my lunch break, and to send Praise and thanks to God for being faithful! I feel that if I trust this humbling experience and do all that I can to learn from it, it will send me to a newer level of spiritual victory that is far more important then what mankind has to say about me.

Praise God!

 

Choosing Not To Take Offense

It is true that when you marinate in the presence of God, you heart is tenderized. The flesh alone and without God can be hard, harsh, sharp, and pressing. When spending quality time communicating with God, I find myself more meek, mild, lowly, and humble in nature.

Matthew 11:28-30 Amplified Bible (AMP)

²⁸Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ^[a]ease and relieve and ^[b]refresh ^[c]your souls.]    ²⁹Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (^[d]relief and ease and refreshment and ^[e]recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.

    ³⁰For My yoke is wholesome (useful, ^[f]good–not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.

I am thankful to God for my restful sleep last night, and for the time given to me this morning to spend time with Him.  As soon as I arrived at my workplace this morning, the Devil was waiting to torment me and make me lose my peace.  A colleague had written to me an e-mail pointing out a mistake I had made a few days previously. The tone of the e-mail was not professional, nor was it appropriate for someone who is not actually in authority to me but rather the same position level that I am.  Immediately, I felt my emotions rise up and I began to type a return response to this individual. I had planned to tell them their tone was not welcome and that I was offended by the communication presented in that manner.  The Holy Spirit reminded me that we should never take offense or else the Enemy has won the battle.

Matthew 11:6 Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁶And blessed (happy, fortunate, and ^[a]to be envied) is he who takes no offense at Me and finds no cause for stumbling in or through Me and is not hindered from seeing the Truth.

So I deleted the Draft of my return response and immediately felt my heart grow lighter and a sense of victory in this battle. I was so glad that the Word inside me had spoken to me and reminded me of the Truth.  Well this set off the Devil even more and he began to natter in my thoughts, lying to me and telling me that I was letting this person get away with treating me like that. The Devil taunted me to stand up for myself and let it be known no one could treat me that way now or ever! Again, the Word spoke to me and reminded me not to listen. The words, “Get thee behind me, Satan” came into my mind and I used them to cast down the unrighteous thoughts.

Matthew 16:23 Amplified Bible (AMP)

²³But Jesus turned ^[a]away from Peter and said to him, Get behind Me, Satan! You are in My way [an offense and a hindrance and a snare to Me]; for you are ^[b]minding what partakes not of the nature and quality of God, but of men.

This is a lesson in spiritual warfare that was first taught to me through Joyce Meyer, and reinforced into my soul by studying the Word of God.  I feel so blessed and at peace now as I write about this experience.

Thank you, Jesus for never leaving me nor forsaking me. Thank you also for sending the Holy Spirit to come aid me and to direct my thinking.  Thank you, God for your Word and for all the restoration of my soul you have done!

Refusing To Give Up!

Today, I am in the midst of the battlefield of my mind!  I am definitely being tested to keep on pressing on and not to give up!

This day finds me being tested from every which way. Firstly, I did not get a full night’s sleep last night. My mind raced with thoughts due to a choice I made to move in the Flesh and not in God’s Will. As such, I could not rest because my mind was busy trying to figure everything out, in order to preserve my prideful attitude (bad choice).

Upon awakening, I immediately went back to thinking on thoughts from the night before, while trying to get my breakfast and get myself ready to come to work. I then ate, watched TV, and spent a whole 3 minutes talking to the Lord and thanking him for the new day he has blessed me to be apart of.

I arrived at work to turmoil and shortness of staff. The phones rang continually, people appeared at my desk looking for assistance, and the access requests flowed to me via e-mail and hard copy forms in our mailbox. All at the same time, I was trying to track the purchase of my new iPhone,  protective case, and figure out with Bell Canada what services I should be getting on the device.  To top it all off, the heat is still on in our work area and the thermometer is already approaching 17C!

I stopped everything I was doing and prayed to God to help me, telling him I could not keep this up on my own strengths and needed His help and to lean on Him to get me through all these trials. While I felt a bit better immediately,  in my heart I knew it was not enough. I then turned to the daily devotional on the Joyce Meyer website for guidance.  topic was battling the negative thoughts in our minds and how we should choose to concentrate on only the positive thoughts to press on to victory.   Joyce offered these two scriptures in order to get the point across:

Galatians 6:9 Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁹And let us not lose heart and grow weary and faint in acting nobly and doing right, for in due time and at the appointed season we shall reap, if we do not loosen and relax our courage and faint.

Romans 12:2 Amplified Bible (AMP)

²Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].

It is amazing that how timely these messages come to me when I seem to need them the most. I do know that God is always with me and is there to guide Him if only I lean on and trust in Him.

Deuteronomy 31:6 Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁶Be strong, courageous, and firm; fear not nor be in terror before them, for it is the Lord your God Who goes with you; He will not fail you or forsake you.

Remembering I am nothing without Him, and my flesh cannot do anything good without Him needs to stay in the forefront of my mind.  If we do what we can do, then God will do what we cannot do.

Amen.

Miserable Without The Lord

In the past couple of weeks, I have not purposely made myself available to spend some quality time with the Lord.Instead of awakening at 4am or 5am to pray and study God’s Word, I have allowed myself to sleep in and then spend the time watching NetFlix or setting up my new Mac Mini computer in the living room.

Oh sure I did say a quick prayer on the odd day, making sure I was thankful for my blessings present and past. I also made sure I had confessed some recent sins and asked for forgiveness of them to clean my plate. This does not seem to be enough for a relationship with the Lord as my personal thoughts and feelings are revealing to me now. I have found myself once again becoming short-tempered, the smile on my face and been replaced by a grimace, and my thought life returned to the days of stinkin’ thinkin.

As Joyce Meyer always says, she needs to spend time in the Word and needs to spend quality time with God in order to stay a nice person. She says never trust the flesh to do the right thing, but trust in the Lord and lean on Him so that you can do the right things.

Genesis 15:6  Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁶And he [Abram] believed in (trusted in, relied on, remained steadfast to) the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness (right standing with God).

Throughout the days my lack of meditating on the Word scriptures as I once did, also shows in my actions and on my face. I had found the winning combination to a joyous life in Christ, and because I did not hold firm in my new position, I feel like I am losing ground.

Joshua 1:8  Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁸This Book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe and do according to all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall deal wisely and have good success.

The Holy Spirit has shown me the difference between the life I led with my old self, and the brand new life that can be in Christ.  Now it is my decision which path I will take.

Reinforcing My Trust in God

For the past few weeks, I have noticed a change in my thinking in regards to my circumstances at work. I have found myself entertaining ideas of  rebellion and confrontation to my superiors.  It appears to be that the level of responsibilities I have is increasing, while my compensation and position status remain the same. Outwardly, I display to the world a new man of patience and emotional stability. In my heart I find I am growing impatient in my situation.  I am wanting to tell my Manager how much I am doing compared to the Seniors in the department making so much more money.  I want him to know I am lagging behind in all that I need to get done because my time is not dedicated to one area of support, and it seems that I am being given a lot of  “make busy” tasks.

Only after writing these thoughts down do I immediately see that trouble is brewing. These thoughts of complaint, rebellion, and references to my own self do not come from God!  It is obvious by the words on this page that it is the Devil who whispers to me and tells me how upset I should be.  My television mentor, Joyce Meyer has taught me that:

1) To complain is to remain

Numbers 11:1

 ¹ Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.

2) Do not look to people to promote you; look to God to do so by Grace in his own time

Psalm 25:1-3

 ¹ In you, LORD my God, 

   I put my trust.

 ² I trust in you; 

   do not let me be put to shame, 

   nor let my enemies triumph over me. 

³ No one who hopes in you 
   will ever be put to shame, 
but shame will come on those 
   who are treacherous without cause.

3) Set your mind and keep it set on things above, and not on things of the Earth

Romans 12:2

²Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].

Dear Lord, My heavenly Father,

Thank you for creating this new day and for blessing me to be a part of it. I shall rejoice to be alive another day and to be walking by Your side! Thank you for a most successful morning in giving me the wisdom to help my colleagues.  Thank you again for the tender heart you have given me This new heart allows me to help others without complaint, and brings me the desire to bring them relief  for the simple reason that I love you and because of all that you have done for me in my life.  Lord, I pray that I will keep my thoughts on You, that I will speak and act as Jesus would do, and that I will show You to others in doing so.

Amen.